With a large clinical trial recently completed, the pharmaceutical company Novartis has adopted an unorthodox approach to the publication of results he disclosed or at least a rough summary in an interview with the New York Times .
The trial, launched in November, was unusual because it was testing a drug for fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited cause of mental retardation. Some considered it unlikely that the correction of brain circuits malfunction in this way would work, although a handful of researchers have experimented with drug treatments in animal modeals. In patients, the drug made a difference, said Mark Fishman, President of Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Our group feels pretty good about the data," he said Times reporter Gardiner Harris, cautioning that the results are not peer reviewed or published. In theory, the treatment may also help in autism, because it is designed to counter the symptoms of this disease.
Novartis officials declined to comment about why they shared news of the test in this way, or provide additional information on how participants are doing. Fishman noted in Times everyone has been helped by the treatment; the Phase I trial have included several dozen patients, and the drug, if it pans, is still far from being approved.
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